Challenges of Assessing Multiple Simultaneous Water Exposures

Abstract

Environmental exposures occur simultaneously and therefore methods and metrics need to be considered to assess these simultaneous exposes. One method, at the ecological level, is to develop indices which consider multiple exposures. The Environmental Quality Index (EQI) was constructed as one such metric which considers multiple environmental exposures from various environmental domains. The EQI estimates overall county-level environmental quality for the entire United States (U.S.). National data was compiled to represent cumulative environmental quality across five domains: air, water, land, sociodemographic, and built environments. The county-level EQI has been developed for two time periods, 2000-2005 and 2006-2010. Specifically, the water domain of the EQI consists of variables spanning overall water quality to recreational water quality to drought. With limited national data to assess water quality, we utilized the available county-level data to construct a water domain. Additionally, between the two time periods, the construction of the water domain has changed due to the availability of data. This presentation will focus on the challenges, both spatial and temporal, of obtaining national data to represent water quality at the county level. Additionally, the EQI is being developed for the census tract level and we will discuss challenges and methods used to consider the smaller geographic scale. Despite the data limitations, we have been able to utilize the EQI and the water domain in epidemiological analyses to explore associations with a variety of health outcomes. This abstract does not reflect EPA policy. Keywords: Water, water quality, big data, environmental epidemiology